Back in the ’70s, there was a lot of controversy about alleged backward masking (i.e., subliminal messaging) in rock music. Parents were absolutely freaking out over it, and forbidding their children to listen to rock music. It should surprise no one to discover that I was one of the kids back then who played a lot of albums backward, just to see what all the controversy was about. It was pretty easy to do on a record player, after all.

While most songs played backward have words here and there that you can clearly recognize, and some even had recognizable sentences which appear to make sense in some way, the undisputed king of all backward messages was, and still is, “Stairway To Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. In fact, many hardcore rock fans at that time called the song “Oppositioner”, based on its backward message.

Don’t misunderstand, I don’t think this was intentional at all, since even human speech played backward can say some pretty weird stuff. Still, it’s kinda freaky that the entire song seems to be a message in line with the song title, LOL. So, for your viewing and listening pleasure, I present to you “Stairway To Heaven” played backward, with the “Oppositioner” lyrics printed on-screen.

Considering that I regularly use the word “trash” to describe ultra-skanky heiress Paris Hilton, I found this a little amusing. From Yahoo News:

LOS ANGELES – So, how much would you pay for an empty dog-food can if you thought it was snatched from Paris Hilton’s trash? So far the answer is $0.

But the people from HollywoodStarTrash.com are counting on someone forking over at least $40. That’s the starting bid listed on eBay for the can that once contained a helping of Party Animal organic gourmet. Bidding closes Sunday.

As of midday Monday, the can had no takers. Nor had anyone put down a bid for the used toothbrush, the Hilton fan letter or the Hilton-autographed postcard also said to have been plucked from the hotel heiress’ garbage.

According to a video placed on hollywoodstartrash.com, a guy wearing an Uncle Sam mask tracked down Hilton’s address from a map to movie stars’ homes. Then he and a colleague, who remains off camera, sneaked into Hilton’s neighborhood before dawn on a recent Thursday and absconded with six bags of garbage.

“We discovered that Paris Hilton throws out a well organized and quite neat bag of trash, save for a few Cobb salads and banana peels,” says one of the two.

Neither immediately responded to an e-mailed request to elaborate.

Their Web site indicated that as time goes by they’ll be sifting through other celebrities’ trash and offering it for sale. A man identified as a lawyer, who appears on the video, tells them their actions are legal as long as they wait for celebrities to put their trash cans out on the street and don’t trespass on their property.

As to whether the trash is really Hilton’s, they place the following statement on each of the eBay offerings: “We guarantee that each item comes from the trash bins outside the celebrity’s home!”

And who wouldn’t believe a guy in an Uncle Sam mask?

Outside the initial amusement factor, though, I find this more than a little disturbing. The website doesn’t stop at empty dog food cans and used toothbrushes. It also has photos of prescription bottles and, although they have “censored” over identifying information, it’s not at all hard to figure out what those bottles contained. I also find it disturbing that these folks actually believe there’s somebody out there, so obsessed with Paris Hilton, that they’d pay for her used tissues and Q-tips. That’s beyond weird. It’s sick.

As you may be aware, OJ Simpson’s book, titled If I Did It, describes how – if in fact he were guilty – he would have murdered his ex-wife (Nicole Brown Simpson) and her friend (Ronald Goldman). Admittedly, it’s an extremely strange idea for a book, but was also sure to be a bestseller.
However, publication of the book was cancelled due to public outrage (although I’d be willing to bet that many of those people would have secretly purchased it), and all copies of the book were destroyed by the publisher. Later, rights to the manuscript were awarded by a bankruptcy court to the Goldman family, as the result of a longstanding $33 million wrongful death civil judgment they won against OJ Simpson.

The original publisher, Judith Regan, called the book “a confession”. His attorneys denied that it was a confession.

Not surprisingly, a news organization received a leaked copy of the manuscript. Newsweek published an article in January about what was in the manuscript, and the writer stated that, in his opinion, it was a confession. However, they did not print any excerpts, so the reader was left wondering how accurate their characterization of a confession really was.

Today the manuscript was leaked again, to celebrity gossip site TMZ, and they published excerpts. I have posted those excerpts here so LFV readers can decide for themselves whether this is, in fact, a confession to the most notorious murder case of our time.

It begins with the following passage:

I’m going to tell you a story you’ve never heard before, because no one knows this story the way I know it. It takes place on the night June 12, 1994, and it concerns the murder of my ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her young friend, Ronald Goldman. I want you to forget everything you think you know about that night because I know the facts better than anyone. I know the players. I’ve seen the evidence. I’ve heard the theories. And, of course, I’ve read all the stories: That I did it. That I did it but I don’t know I did it. That I can no longer tell fact from fiction. That I wake up in the middle of the night, consumed by guilt, screaming.

OJ describes the murder scene:

I looked over at Goldman, and I was fuming. I guess he thought I was going to hit him, because he got into his little karate stance. “What the fuck is that?” I said. “You think you can take me with your karate shit?” He started circling me, bobbing and weaving, and if I hadn’t been so fucking angry I would have laughed in his face. “O.J., come on!” It was Charlie again, pleading. Nicole moaned, regaining consciousness. She stirred on the ground and opened her eyes and looked at me, but it didn’t seem like anything was registering. Charlie walked over and planted himself in front of me blocking my view. “We are fucking done here, man-let’s go!”

I noticed the knife in Charlie’s hand, and in one deft move I removed my right glove and snatched it up. “We’re not going anywhere,” I said, turning to face Goldman. Goldman was still circling me, bobbing and weaving, but I didn’t feel like laughing anymore. “You think you’re tough, motherfucker?” I said. I could hear Charlie just behind me, saying something, urging me to get the fuck out of there, and at one point he even reached for me and tried to drag me away, but I shook him off, hard, and moved toward Goldman. “Okay, motherfucker!” I said. “Show me how tough you are!”

Then something went horribly wrong, and I know what happened, but I can’t tell you exactly how. I was still standing in Nicole’s courtyard, of course, but for a few moments I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there, when I’d arrived, or even why I was there. Then it came back to me, very slowly: The recital-with little Sydney up on stage, dancing her little heart out; me, chipping balls into my neighbor’s yard; Paula, angry, not answering her phone; Charlie, stopping by the house to tell me some more ugly shit about Nicole’s behavior. Then what? The short, quick drive from Rockingham to the Bundy condo. And now?

Now I was standing in Nicole’s courtyard, in the dark, listening to the loud, rhythmic, accelerated beating of my own heart. I put my left hand to my heart and my shirt felt strangely wet. I looked down at myself. For several moments, I couldn’t get my mind around what I was seeing. The whole front of me was covered in blood, but it didn’t compute. Is this really blood? I wondered. And whose blood is it? Is it mine? Am I hurt? (more…)

Since I gave Michelle a hat tip earlier, might as well make it a pair. (It’s easier to get away with staring with my hat tipped low). Something is making me think of Michelle and pairs today. Not sure what that is. Wait, don’t tell me, I almost got it figured out….damn, I forgot again. What was it, I wonder? Anyway. A wolf, a sheep, and a wolf in sheep’s clothing went in the polling booth….did I mention voting was mandatory in the USSR?

Speaking of Republican debates, we will be providing live coverage at Last Free Voice tonight. I’ve heard a rumor that Michelle and TG might show up drunk, and there may or may not be trampolines involved. You won’t want to miss it!

Like this:

Iconoclastic novelist, essayist and humanist Kurt Vonnegut Jr has died, at the age of 84. While Vonnegut would be best described as a libertarian socialist (putting him in a category with such groups as the ACLU and Food Not Bombs), he was the writer whose work most strongly influenced my left libertarian beliefs. The loss of his wry wit and great intellect is a loss to us all.

For anyone not familiar with Vonnegut, he was without question one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Penning such classics as Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut mixed science fiction, sarcasm, black humor, and keen insight to force us to confront the commonality of mankind. His “bad guys” were never people, but governments and situations. His characters were each “a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”

Vonnegut spoke out against war, despite his belief that WWII was necessary. In Slaughterhouse Five, named after the underground meat-packing cellar in which he was held as a POW during the bombing of Dresden, he confronted a truth that most would like to overlook when he wrote, “You know we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. ‘My God, my God—’ I said to myself. ‘It’s the Children’s Crusade.'” His Slaughterhouse Five catchphrase “So it goes”, an ironic reference to death, was adopted by protesters during Vietnam. (more…)

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